Saturday, January 28, 2012

A marketing buzz phrase is, “Wow the Customer.” Most places say it but don't do it. I had to become a customer for Discount Tire Direct and here is what I have to say: “Wow!”

We had a ice and snow storm a few weeks ago. I learned to drive on the Canadian Border so I didn't think much of it. Then I made a stupid mistake.

I was pulling out on to the road and turned my tires too sharp, the car snowplowed and went straight into the curb at 5mph. It was a solid hit on the front passenger rim. I continued to drive and the car started shaking violently at 5 mph.

As a former Network Engineer I looked at this as an Engineering problem, so I turned the car off for 20 seconds and turned it back on. Amazingly that didn't fix it. So did what I would do if a network slowed down, I got out of the car and got back in. That didn't work either.

I drove home at 40 mph, the car would shake off the road if I went faster. The next morning, I took it to my mechanic at Precision Auto and they swapped the rear tire with the front and put the spare on the rear. That worked but I need a rim.

They searched for a week and finally found one at a junkyard 60 miles away. I took it to my tire shop and found it didn't fit.

After all this I searched for some answers and went online. It turns out that the Nissan Sentra uses a 4x114.3 mm (4x4.5") bolt pattern, if you have this bolt pattern it means that in a former life you committed a crime against nature so heinous that hell has no punishment great enough for proper justice.

My salesman was Wyatt, and at first I worried as he was so confident the rim he recommended would fit. After my week of bad luck I thought he might be overconfident. But he shipped out the tire and it arrived the next day. Discount Tire Direct has an awesome shipping dept. It cost me $70 for the super cool looking rim, a used steel one would cost over half that, if I could find one. After over a week of searching I was pretty sure I couldn't.

Sure enough the tire fit like he said it would, but there was a problem. My lugs didn't fit the smaller holes in the rim. It took special lugs.

I called Wyatt back in a panic, he told me to calm down and he sent out the lugs and the special socket for it, free of charge.

Now I have great looking rim, that really makes my Sentra look snazzy. If I ever have this problem again I know it can be fixed in a day, and life is wonderful thanks to Wyatt and Discount Tire Direct.

As soon as I save up a little money I'll get a matching rim. But I wondered what the Sentra would look like with all four tires on good rims. A quick session in Photoshop showed it would look pretty cool.

About Your Host

I am slowly combining my two personalities Project Savior, known on the internet for writing comments and posts and Darrell B. Nelson the semi-professional author who has had his work published in Ray Gun Revival, Distant Worlds, AlienSkin Magazine, Bewildering Stories, Cynic Magazine and the author of the collection of short stories “I Killed the Man That Wasn't There”.
Feel free to laugh with me, or at me, as I merge these two personalities in a whole being. Feel free to email me at project.savior (at) yahoo (period) com.